When the Faithful Falter | Theocast

The Faithful Falter in Genesis and John’s Gospel

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we're going to talk about when the faithful falter. For example, Abraham is called by the Apostle Paul the man of faith, and he is upheld as the model of justification by faith in all the Bible.

Yet this is a man who, on two different occasions, sold his wife out to defilement and adultery. What do we do with that? And even the disciples, as they are sitting in a room huddled up together, terrified in the aftermath of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection.

What do we do with that account? Why are passages like this in the Bible? That's what John and I are going to have a conversation about today, and we hope that you leave this episode being encouraged in the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ and how he has you and has saved you.

So stay tuned.

If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to Theocast, Encouraging Weary Pilgrims to Rest in Christ, conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed and pastoral perspective. Your hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and myself, Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

John, my friend, my brother, how you doing today?

Good. I'm excited to be here. Take two, internet problems, but I think we've got them solved for today. For those of you that don't know, Justin and I do not fly and see each other. We zoom to see each other.

That's right. We do not have a Theocast jet. Good book giveaway today. The first introduction was, I think, better than this one's gonna be, but this is A Dear Friend of Ours. It's kind of like an autobiography of his repentance and restoration to grace and faith in Christ.

And it's just a great book. We've read it. It's a page-turner, as you said, but it's also, it's heavy at times in that you're listening to how destructive

It's very raw and honest.

How destructive sin is and can be. And really, what I love about this book, and I've said before, Chad proves that no matter how good your theology is, you can still be tripped up by sin. And I think that's so good.

Because I remember asking Chad that. I'm like, do you think this was related to your theology? And he said, no, not at all. Actually, my theology is no different today than it was then. It's just a belief in the faith and the gospel.

So anyways, for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, it's Chad Bird's book, Night Driving. And we're gonna give that away. So we pulled down all of our members. We sorted them out in a random order.

And I told Justin to give me a number. He chose 417 for the day.

There we go.

And that is going to Gene Wells. Gene has been a listener for such a long time. And so, Gene, congratulations. We'll send that book to you. If you would like to get a free copy of this, we like to get one away every week.

You can do so by going to our social medias every Wednesday morning. And that's Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. You can follow the instructions that are there. And then on Thursday, either myself or Justin will hop on there and tell you who wins.

And that will be sent out to you. And I know many of you are probably wondering where your books are that you've won. And they haven't been sent for a while because, well, frankly, I've been busy. And so has Justin.

So thankfully, we have a volunteer. And we'll just call her by her first name, Jen, thank you for volunteering to help send those out. So we'll be caught up quite soon.

If I can really quickly, Chad's book is autobiographical, right? I mean, he's talking about his own life, but it is applicable to everybody because it is just dripping with gospel and grace and mercy and repentance and restoration and what those things look like.

And it's applicable for all of us because we all, in various ways, sin. And we all, in various ways, at points, rebel and bristle and push back against God in our lives. And for some people, that looks like a very public, obvious, heinous failure.

For other people, it might just be the ongoing struggle of the Christian life. But either way, the book is super encouraging because we're reminded of the Lord's ways with us and how He does have us and how He repents us and keeps us and restores us.

And so I would highly commend it to anybody. I know a number of people in my own congregation have read the book and have been super encouraged by it.

Yeah, same here. I've had several in our congregation. And we've mentioned it on the podcast before. We had to interview Chad on the book.

And just talk about some of these things.

Yep, you can go back real early in our archives and find that one. So probably just a year and a half ago or more. Yeah, so we picked this book because it is somewhat related to, not all the books we pick are related to our subjects.

This one is somewhat related to our subjects today. So this has actually probably never happened, but it's kind of fun that it did. Both what Justin and I preached on this last Sunday is directly related to our subject.

Normally, it's what he's preached on or what I've preached on or something we're thinking about or a listener has contacted us. But we were both feeling this particular topic and we both preached on it.

So buckle up. We're gonna try our best to get this through in like 40 minutes. We have to today.

Yeah, and this is actually gonna spill over into our episode next week, which we'll kind of tease at the end of this one. Because there's really multiple things that were going on for me. I'm preaching through Genesis.

You're preaching through John's gospel. And one of the things that we're talking about today, or the thing we're talking about today is just one of the things that overlap. There's actually some other stuff that's just pertaining to the nature of faith and the gospel and things like that that we're gonna talk about a week from today.

So anyway, we'll get there in a minute. Yeah, let's go ahead and set this up for the listener and then we'll jump in. So the title of the episode, everybody has seen it, When the Faithful Falter. Why this topic today?

Again, I'm preaching through Genesis. And so this past Sunday was in Genesis 12, verse 10 and following all the way through the end of chapter 14. And one piece of that section of Genesis is Abram and Sarai in Egypt.

And many may know that that's the first of two situations where Abram effectively sells his wife out to defilement for basically motivated by selfishness and self-preservation and fear. And Abraham, of course, is held up as the man of faith and the model of justification by faith in all of scripture.

But it's quite clear that his faith faltered at points. And in other words, his faith was like ours. And then John, you are preaching through John's gospel and where were you this past Sunday?

Yeah.

So this is the upper room. I'm sorry, not the upper room. This is the disciples hiding in a room with the door locked. This is right after Jesus' resurrection. He meets Mary in John's gospel, sends Mary off to go tell the disciples that he is going to their God and to their father.

And then Jesus appears in the room. And from the moment of Jesus resting in the garden to the moment that Jesus is standing there in that room, you don't see the strong disciples who said, we'll go with you anywhere.

We'll die for you. All you see is the faltering constantly of the disciples. And so we're going to kind of take both the New Testament and the Old Testament and show how the narrative seems to be the same.

Totally. So this is going to be a conversation about Genesis. It's going to be a conversation about John, not John Moffat, but John's gospel. Amen. And then we'll probably talk a little bit about just redemptive historical preaching.

And that's probably where we're going to go in the SR portion, maybe in more detail. So get ready. If you like Genesis, if you like John, today's podcast is for you. So let's start out in the book of Genesis.

Again, chapter 12. If you have a Bible near you and you want to look along, totally you can. It's Genesis chapter 12, verses 10 to 20. We're not going to go verse by verse or anything, but if you wanted to read the account that we're talking about, that's where you can find it.

So again, basically the situation is there's a famine in the land where Abraham is, and that famine drives him into Egypt to find food. And this is going to happen again with Abraham's descendants, we know.

Jacob and his children are going to go down into Israel as well. Kind of cool how those patterns repeat themselves over and over again in redemptive history, but that's another podcast for another day.

So as Abraham is driven down into Egypt for food, he's faced with a decision, right? Because he's going down there as a sojourner, which means that he doesn't have rights. He doesn't have legal recourse.

He doesn't have protection in those ways. He's vulnerable as a sojourner, and he knows that. So as they're going down into the land of Egypt, Abraham says to his wife, okay, look, you are a beautiful woman.

And when the Egyptians see you, they're going to notice that. And they're going to want to get rid of me because you're so beautiful. They're going to want to eliminate me from the equation so that they can do with you what they want to do.

At what point do you think she's like, oh, this is a great compliment. And then she goes, oh, he's being for sure. He's being real. He's being serious.

He's being like, for real, for real, for real. Like, he says this. I mean, they'll kill me, but they'll let you live. So then verse 13, he pitches the plan. So say that you are my sister. This is what he says.

Say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared for your sake. So it's very straightforward. I mean, in terms of what his plan is and what his hopes are.

Because Sarah's beautiful, she is going to tell them that she's not Abram's wife. She is his sister. And so now they will treat Abram well because of that. And in verses 14 to 16, that's exactly what happens.

They go into the land of Egypt and it all unfolds according to Abram's plan, right? And I'm using Abram and Abraham interchangeably. Forgive me for doing that. The studious amongst us will know that he is not called Abraham until Genesis 17, but anyway.

So yeah, verses 14 to 16, the Egyptians see that Sarah's beautiful when they enter into the land. And then the princes of Pharaoh commend her to Pharaoh. Pharaoh takes her into his house to be his wife.

And he treats Abram well. I mean, verse 16, and for her sake, he dealt well with Abram and gives him a bunch of stuff. So it's like, it's all working out according to Abram's plan. But then in verse 17 is where it really takes a very interesting turn.

We read that the Lord afflicts Pharaoh's house on account of Sarai because of the defilement, the adultery that's going on, right? And so then Pharaoh in verse 18 approaches Abram.

It's wild.

This whole scenario is insane how it unfolds because in this account, it's almost as though Pharaoh is set up as the one who is the righteous man. And Abram is the one who is the selfish liar. So Pharaoh, he confronts Abram.

And in verse 18 says, what is this that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? And he says, why did you say she's my sister so that I took her for my wife? In other words, I wouldn't have done that if I'd have known that she was married to you.

Here is your wife, take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning him and they sent him away with his wife and all that he had. I mean, just a few other observations, John, and then I want you to jump in and we'll kind of go back and forth on this.

This is a remarkable, remarkable account because Pharaoh is very upright in the way that he deals with Abraham here. He not only, when he finds out about the adultery, not only does he stop the adultery, he doesn't continue it.

He confronts Abraham and even rebukes Abraham for lying about it all. He doesn't kill Abraham, which would have not been uncommon. And he had been giving a bunch of stuff to Abraham because of Sarai and he doesn't demand any of that stuff back.

He lets Abraham keep it all. And then he sends them away out of the country and gives orders to his men to make sure they get out safely. So it's like, he is kind and merciful and all these things. And it's like, my goodness, it's almost like he is more concerned for Sarai's welfare than Abraham is.

And it is not Abraham's finest day. He does not handle this in an exemplary manner. That's very clear. Let me just say this at the outset before we riff on this. Disclaimer, we've got to do this because we don't want to be misunderstood.

Sin is wrong and sin is destructive. It ruins lives. We ought to flee from it. We ought to pursue righteousness. Nothing that we are about to say excuses sin in any way. We are just going to have an honest conversation about the nature of life in this fallen world and the fact that God's people still sin sometimes heinously.

And what can we learn from these kinds of accounts about God and about ourselves and about His ways with us?

That's the question.

There you go.

Well, you have to, first of all, make the observation that Abraham is one of the few men who had the privilege of speaking with the Lord, having conversations with Him. So we do know that Abraham believes in God.

And what his theology is at this point, I don't know. Obviously, if Pharaoh knows what he's doing is wrong, Abraham knows what he's doing is wrong. So let's just get this clear. It's obvious Abraham knows what he's doing is wrong.

And yet fear is what seems to be his reason.

Yeah, self-preservation, selfishness even.

Yeah, selfishness.

Fear and selfishness seems to be his motivation. But the reason why it's in the narrative, I think it's a random story. Like if you think about, let's just think about the narrative here for a moment.

So we understand that the story of the Bible is the unfolding redemption of Christ. I mean, sorry, of sinners by Christ. What did this really add to the unfolding story of the redemption of Jesus Christ?

We know that Abraham is in the line of Christ's seed, right? So like it's from Abraham, we get to the Messiah. Why did the Holy Spirit find it necessary to put that in there? Well, I think it's very important because every word according to Paul to Timothy is profitable for reproof, instruction, and in doctrine.

Well, I'm going to say very clearly for reproof, instruction, and doctrine and for holiness, it's obvious to see that men who are often raised to be faithful are the ones who scripture described as faltering.

So if you want to talk about the faithful one, we're going to have to point to Christ. But in this narrative, I can see very clearly why the Holy Spirit put this in here because one of the most famous important men in bringing us the Messiah faltered, not once, but multiple times.

Yeah, so some observations here. I mean, what I said before, I do think matters like in terms of a pattern for Israel because Abraham is going down into Egypt, has dealings with Pharaoh, is brought out by God into the promised land, and Israel will be too.

But I agree with you. I mean, why all the details of his failure even and all that? And this is one of the things too that people have said about scripture for ages, and I agree, I know you do too. One of the things that commends scripture in terms of its truthfulness is the fact that it does not give a flattering presentation of its major figures.

I mean, this is not a flattering presentation of Father Abraham, right? The man who is called by the Apostle Paul, the man of faith, who is the pattern for justification by faith in all of the Bible. And yet we see him doing this.

And again, I just wanna be super clear. The point of none of this is that sin is no big deal. That's ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd. The point of this, John, I think to what you just said, the point of this is that God saves sinners, that God justifies the ungodly, right?

That the point here is that he doesn't just save upright, likable, virtuous people. The point is that he saves wretches in need of mercy and gives us the righteousness of Christ, a righteousness that we don't deserve and could never earn.

And that's what he did with Abraham. And here's the deal. Like you pointed at this too. Many of us as Christians, we all sin, and some of us will commit sins as Christians that are shameful. But God will keep us through it all, and people will then raise, okay, but we can't be engaged in habitual sins where we're doing something that's heinous.

Surely we should learn from that first experience and never do it again. And people would say that about Abram here. It's like, well, man, after this and this whole thing and how it shook out, surely to goodness, he'll never do this again.

Well, he does in chapter 20. He does the same thing again. He's going to sell his wife out to defilement again. And not excusing his behavior, but the point is that he is going to fall in the same way again, yet at the end of it all, he will be finally saved on account of Christ and on account of the righteousness of Christ, and so will we.

Now, if you hear that and your immediate thought is in the face of that mercy and that grace and that love, if your immediate thought is, oh, good, well, we can just go sin now, I don't know that you've understood the gospel.

When we are confronted with that kind of mercy and grace and that kind of just love in the face of our sin and failure, I mean, our thoughts are, man, what a God and what a Savior and what good news this is.

I want to go out of here now and love my neighbor and pursue righteousness because of what God has done for me.

That's right.

That's the response. Well, not only that, the thing about there is, outside of Christ, there are temporal consequences and there are eternal consequences. The world knows there's temporal consequences.

This is why things like AA exist. People don't like the effects of sin. Most don't.

No, it's true.

Yeah, I mean, the world, like look at Pharaoh. Pharaoh even knows this is wrong. Why are you doing this? So to think that to promote grace is to make sin acceptable is wrong. I will say that a lot of times I encourage men in my own church to say, hey, look, you need to take a good, long, hard look at your fight against sin and realize that, yeah, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, but the temporal punishment or consequences, you don't want to go through that.

I mean, Justin and I both have had to walk people through absolute shattered lives.

Brother, it's terrible.

The scars they carry with them until death are horrendous.

It's disgusting.

And it's like, I mean, a brother and I were having, a guy from my congregation and I were having a conversation after the service on Sunday, and he was greatly affected by the sermon and the service in general, but he was just astonished at thinking about Pharaoh and Abraham and all this.

And Abraham committed this heinous sin, but yet God's going to deliver him. And it's like, yeah, that's true. And at the same time, we're not told all of the details in terms of the fallout that Abraham and Sarah and everybody had to go through.

And there's going to be more in subsequent chapters when he sleeps with Hagar, and then Ishmael was born and all of that just absolutely tumultuous stuff that occurs in his household as a result of that.

And then in chapter 20, when he sells Sarah out again, I mean, we're not told about all of the fallout in terms of their lives on earth. Our lives are wrecked by sin. And we ought to flee from it for the good of our neighbor, for the good of everyone who loves us and is close to us.

And we ought to pursue righteousness and flee from sin because it does honor the Lord. I think one thing to comment on before we leave this Old Testament section and jump into John's gospel, and we may pick up more on this later, even in SR, something I said on Sunday, and I know you agree, John, because we've talked about this before, we would do really well to talk honestly about the lives of saints as they are described on the pages of Scripture.

In other words, we would do well not to whitewash them. And we ought not try to domesticate things and edit out the ugly parts in this kind of flannel board presentation of the lives of the saints. I am convinced, John, that the Scriptures are such a tremendous gift from God to those who seek to be honest about our struggle with sin.

And we're able to look at texts, even like this, and see how Abraham, this man of faith, sinned and struggled, yet is going to be finally delivered. And we are able to see something there of how the Lord will deal with us.

So it's like, look, are there things commendable about Abraham's life? Absolutely, and we talked about some of those in our service on Sunday. We'll talk about some of those things moving forward. But there are plenty of things about his life that are not exemplary, and this is why we don't preach sermons on how to be like Abraham.

We don't preach sermon series on dare to be a Daniel or seven ways to be like David, or we don't do a 31-part series on the life of Jeremiah. There's a reason that we don't do that, because Abraham, if he were sitting here today, would be the first to say, be like me?

That's not a good idea. I mean, because seriously, John, you and I both have a number of godly men in our congregations who have not sold their wives out to defilement for their own protection and profit.

No, 30 years of marriage, never once.

And Abraham, I think, brother, would tell us, look, there's really only one thing about me that you would want to imitate, and that is to believe God.

That's right.

Believe in the one who justifies the ungodly. Believe in Jesus, God's promised one who has saved us from our sins. Abraham's best moments were when he took God at his word.

If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called Faith Versus Faithfulness, A Primer on Rest. And if you've struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a Reformed confessional perspective.

You can get your free copy at theocast .org slash primer.

To defend what you're saying, let me quote Paul. In 1 Corinthians 10, he says, now these things happen, and he is describing the fall of Israel and a lot in 1 Corinthians 10. He describes a lot of falter.

He says, these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instructions on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stand take heed lest he fall.

No temptation has overtaken you, which is not common to man. And the point of it is, if you think that you don't have the same capacity to fall as they did, you better take heed.

It's a beautiful.

So when someone says, well, John, these are an example, I'm like, yes, yes, that you too can fall.

And that you are just like, I mean, in other words, that's an example because you are just like Abraham and Abraham is just like you. And you could end up doing the exact same thing that Abraham did. You shouldn't.

And again, maybe more on this later, but I don't think it takes a lot from us, homie, to be able to look at our people and say, you know, it's probably not good to sell your spouse out to defilement. Like that, if I need to open the Bible to chapter and verse to convince you of that, if I need to open the Bible to convince you of that, we need to have another conversation.

That's called the law on our hearts right there, man.

Yeah, brother.

I mean, for real. And you know, the law is, it's written into the human heart and there's a civil use of it where, like you even said, I mean, Pharaoh is clearly aware that to commit adultery or to take another man's wife is inappropriate.

That's right.

Anyway.

Peace with God in John 20

Yeah, so let's transition to John.

Let's do. Yep.

And this is gonna be a slightly different perspective. Same conclusion, it's always Jesus, but let's look at it from a different perspective. Jesus recruits these men and in this narrative, some would even argue that maybe even Mary and some other people are in this room.

Obviously, Thomas is not because Thomas asks to see later. But at this point, you have the disciples have abandoned Jesus. Peter has denied him three times. It's a mess of a story. Of course, Jesus told them this would happen.

And some of the disciples here, and not only that, here they walk with Jesus and eat with him. They don't know it's quite him. And then they're trying to figure it out. And then he appears in this locked room.

So John describes that Jesus appears within this locked room and uses a phrase that's not uncommon, peace be to you. It's a very common phrase. It's like walking into a room and saying, hey guys, the funny thing is, is that I think John has just an unbelievable sense of humor.

And he is very sarcastic and snarky at times, in my humble opinion, it's in the Greek. It's Jesus like literally magically appears in the room. And the words he uses is, hey guys, which Luke describes them as yelling out saying,.

It's a ghost.

Yeah, greetings.

And John describes the very next thing that makes Jesus's words come to life. It makes sense. It's not just a simple hello, peace to you. So in Jeremiah, twice Jeremiah yells out to the people, which is, I would never want to have to have Jeremiah's job.

All he did was preach doom and gloom and wrath upon Israel. And twice he comes after them and says, the false prophets are saying peace, peace. When there is no peace, you better beware and you better repent because if you don't, judgment's coming upon you.

And of course, when it ends up happening, judgment does come upon Israel and it's a mess. Jesus walks into the room of men who have abandoned him, who are afraid of being killed because they're followers of Jesus, who are doing everything wrong.

And he appears before them and he says, peace be to you. And what does John say? Immediately he showed him his hands and his side and then says again, peace be to you. Why do they now have peace with the father?

Jesus is showing them. It is not their actions. It is not their faithfulness. It's not their dedication. It is his scars in his hands and in his side. He received the wrath that Jeremiah was talking about was coming because there was no peace between God and man.

And now there's peace between God and man. Now I wanna talk, this is where the thing's a little bit different. I wanna talk about the motivation for obedience because in this same section, let me just pull this up so I don't misquote it.

It says, when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples were glad when they saw them. And Jesus said to them again, peace be with you. I love this. This is their motivation.

You're good. Because of me, you're good. That's what he says. As the father has sent me, even so I am sending you. Men who are locked in a room, afraid that they may be caught as a Jesus follower, Jesus comes in and uses what to motivate them?

Not fear, not dread, not death, not warning. What does he motivate them with? All wrath and anger and punishment has been put upon me. Here's the proof. Now I'm sending you out to finish what the father has started.

I mean, you wanna talk about your motivation to obey coming from the gospel? What a point, right? What a point.

Yeah, I mean, I'm just sitting here listening to you talk about it. I'm looking at the text. I've got my Bible open over here, and yeah, it's very clear. What is it that is to drive and propel and motivate the disciples?

It's peace. It's peace with God that Jesus alone has accomplished. Like you just said, all the wrath that is due sin, all of the righteous indignation that God has against all of the wickedness that all of his people have ever committed, all of his wrath against just our inherent corruption and rebellion against him and all of those things, all of his righteousness and holiness and everything that that requires in one sense in terms of his justice, all of these things have been poured out in full on Christ.

His scars are evidence of that. It's like Romans 5 .1. Because we have now been justified by faith, we have peace with God because of what Christ has done. And so the motivation, it's kind of like what I was saying earlier.

In the face of this just astonishing grace and mercy, like this is what we deserved, to be crushed by the Father, but instead Jesus was crushed for us. When we think about, man, I deserve that and now I have peace and love and grace and fellowship and security and all of these things, now I get to go be a part of what the Father is doing in this world through his Son.

And so then the question, why would we then want to go sin? And the answer to that question, John, is because the flesh is real, but yet in our inner man, I was having a conversation on the phone with a guy who listens to this podcast yesterday and we were talking about this.

It was a great conversation. It is a reality where we are born again. We have been united to Christ and his spirit has taken up residence within us and by virtue of that, we now have become obedient from the heart and we delight in God's law in our inner man and we want to obey.

It's because we hear the gospel and we see how good it is and we consider the mercy and the privilege and all that is ours in Christ and we want to go and love and preach Jesus and flee from sin and pursue righteousness, yet the flesh remains and it's real and the flesh at times overcomes the saints, but yet the confidence that we have is that at the end of the day, Christ is victorious because he brings judgment to victory.

Which is not a justification.

Say again?

Which is not a justification.

For sin?

To sin, yeah.

No, no.

That's a huge disconnect in a non-sequitur.

I don't get it, yeah.

I, for the life of me, don't understand it because we've got to have this conversation when it comes to sin. What is your motivation to flee from sin and pursue righteousness? Is it fear? Is it dread?

Is it merit? Because if you're talking in those terms, those are legal terms.

That's right.

Where you still in some way are thinking that you've got something to escape or something to earn before the Lord.

That's right.

But God has told us that Christ has handled that. So the motivation has to be something else and it's love and peace and security and knowing that the wrath that was due me,.

Jesus took it.

Yeah.

I think that one of the, Justin, as we're talking through this and there's in the news, there's been all kinds of failures for, it feels like for the last five years, there's like, my wife feels, she says like it's inevitable.

It's just a never ending thing.

She says it's inevitable.

From various theological streams.

Well, this is what I want to get into. The moment you, like, there's this thing that happens when you see someone in it. And I used to do this to my fundamentalist brothers. I mean, in fundamentalism, it's grotesque sin and falling all the time and cover up, it's bad.